While we by no means aim to describe every Easterm European startup on our pages, we will occasionally profile those whose concept we find interesting or unique. Here is a review of Bulgarian Farmhopping, backed by the Bulgarian accelerator eleven.bg. UPDATE: So, the founder of this company, Rossi Mitova has been visiting farms and generally away from the internet, but we managed to get in touch and it appears that I made an error when I first wrote this story. She told me that as far as pricing goes, Farmhopping takes 10% on deals with farms that manage their profiles alone. However, some farms are unable to do this and the company has other arrangements with them.

The Concept

Farmhopping is a Bulgarian startup which connects farmers with consumers and facilitates the “adoption” of small parts of farms by non-farmers. It aims to create a program through which consumers can essentially sponsor various farm units (olive trees, fruit trees, beehives, etc.) and can subsequently monitor the progress of their unit, follow the farmer as he or she tends to the product, or even help in the harvesting process.

Why crowdsourcing?

Consumption of food tends to be a very impersonal process. People will consume a great deal of food on a daily basis, but what sort of contact do they have with the producer of what they eat? In almost all cases, there is no connection between the farmer and the consumer. Farmhopping attempts to correct this by allowing non-farmers to take on a more active role in the food-creation process.

Current Status

At the moment, Farmhopping intends to go live at the end of January. Rossi Mitova, the founder and CEO of Farmhopping told me that farms from Bulgaria, the United States, Egypt, India, Israel, Greece, and the Philippines have signed on to be a part of this project and that the list is constantly increasing.

Price

Joining the program is free, but there is a 10-20% commission fee for each transaction.

Competition

According to the research conducted by Mitova and her team, there is not direct competition out there, but that there are similar crowdsourced-projects out there. When I first read about this startup, the premise seemed vaguely familiar. What I remembered, however, was “Adopt-a-farm” animal projects such as this. Whereas there are programs which allow people to sponsor farm animals, Farmhopping’s mission of creating a direct farmer-consumer connection appears to be original.

Conclusion

In recent decades, environmental-consciousness has grown dramatically. In today’s world, many people maintain a desire to know about the source of their food and about the effects that modern farming has on the environment. Farmhopping offers farmers an opportunity to surpass distributors and sell directly to the end customers interested in sustainable means of food-production and knowing the source of the food they regularly eat. The concept will of course be limited to the non-perishable goods and those that comply with the import regulations.